The HERC’s decision was based on an exhaustive 100-page evidence review; a review, according to them, hampered by the low quality of the evidence on the safety of planned out-of-hospital births. Actually, there is a paucity of evidence altogether. Studies and statistics from other countries, like the Netherlands, were of limited utility because those countries have more stringent midwifery education and training requirements and non-hospital births are better integrated into the health care system.

Most planned out-of-hospital births in Oregon are attended by what are known as direct-entry midwives (DEM), as opposed to nurse midwives, and a few naturopathic doctors. (We’ll look at the many variations of midwifery in a minute.) Since OHP pays for 23% of Oregon births, the economic impact on direct-entry midwives could be substantial. This effect will be amplified when other insurers, who are expected to follow OHP’s new criteria, change their own coverage rules. (more…)

A coffee enema – almost, but not quite, totally unlike tea…and some sort of complex analogy involving naturopathy and science.

Those of you in the know recognize the title from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, among the funniest and most quotable books of all time. If you have not read the five books in the trilogy, get to work. Consider it a homework assignment.

I bit off more than I can chew for this entry. I usually plan on about 8–10 hours over 4 –5 days to write these entries. So I had this idea. Now that naturopaths have been declared primary care providers by the Oregon legislature I thought it would be good to look over all the websites in Portland to see, in their own words, what naturopaths were offering. I figured there would not be that many sites to review. How many naturopaths could be in Portland?

There is not enough beer time in the world

Holy Cannoli. I thought there would be 30, which is the number infesting Eugene, the second most naturopathed city in Oregon. There is no way that I could do a comprehensive review of that many websites in the limited time I have to devote to the blog. But my brain is not unlike an oil tanker with blog entries, it takes a long time to change direction and I had nothing else mentally lined up to write about. (more…)

When the Pacific NW secedes from the Union it is to be part of a new country, Cascadia. The capital would be Portlandia, I suppose. Somehow, I think not. But when I watch the devolution of health care in Oregon, I think back to The Onion (?) when they reported that the United Kingdom was to be sold to Disney, being renamed as “The United Magic Kingdom.”

That is health care in Oregon due the steady insinuation of naturopathy and other pseudomedicine into real health care.

Oregon Health and Pseudoscience University

Growing up my alma mater was the University of Oregon Medical School. Since then it has undergone two name changes, first to Oregon Health Sciences University and then to the current Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU)—with, it should be noted, an ampersand. Not an ‘and’.

Perhaps they need one more name change, since they are not always that interested in the “Science” part of their name.

As an aside my kids let me know that the word ‘Oriental’ as used to describe people from the East, the term I grew up using, is persona non grata. I understand the reasoning. The proper term, they tell me, is Asian. So I have a mental cringe every time I see the name “Oregon College of Oriental Medicine”.

All three schools are steeped in pseudoscience and pseudomedicine, removed from known reality. As examples, the naturopathic school teaches homeopathy (and more), the chiropractic school teaches the subluxation complex, and the ‘Oriental’ (cringe) school teaches acupuncture. Reading the curricula of the schools suggests that there is no pseudomedical stone left unturned. (more…)

Why that is, I do not know. As an Infectious Disease doctor I prescribe a narcotic about once a year. There are real problems with the treatment of chronic pain and while I am aware of the issues and the changes over the last 25 years, it does not impact my practice, so my knowledge of the issues is basic.

I am also well aware of the Oregon Health Plan (OHP). The OHP was intended to make health care more available to the working poor, while rationing benefits. They were fairly transparent that resources were fixed and not everything would be covered.

Given limited resources, part of the plan has always included a prioritization of treatments and diagnostics, paying for care that give the most bang for the buck. Not a perfect way to ration care and as is always the case, no good deed goes unpunished. (more…)

Me and my lovely wife Phyllis Schlafly, amazed at what naturopaths will believe.From the Wikimedia Commons, because we’re that famous.

As regular readers know, I live in the great Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland, Oregon. I am at home in the organic/hippy/environmental mind-set. It is what I grew up with. It is a relaxed, informal place to live. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that formal attire is tucking your tee shirt into your jeans. At least the metro area, and perhaps much of the state, is relatively tolerant of the actions of others. A real what’s the harm/shruggie approach to life, the universe and everything.

I will admit that the irrational/shruggie/emotional/Oregonian/goateed part of my brain is often at odds with my more rational brain, which wants me to give a rat’s ass about issues I think are just wrong. It showed up strongly with fluoridation in Portland, where my rational brain knew adding fluoride to the water was a great idea and my Oregonian nature said water should be pure, man, like nature intended. I keep my inner Oregonian under tight control as his approach often sounds good until you carefully examine how his ideas are implemented. Except at the pub of course. Bring on the hops, man, like nature intended beer to be.

based solely on treatment that is not universally accepted by the medical profession.

The major bone of contention has been extended courses of IV antibiotics for ‘chronic’ Lyme, but there are a wide variety of treatments that may be used by so called “Lyme literate” doctors.

The number of therapies divorced from reality that are offered to Lyme patients is remarkable. I do not know if chronic Lyme patients have greater use of pseudo-medical therapies than other pseudo-diagnoses, but I am impressed by the offerings in a recent review:

Results. More than 30 alternative treatments were identified, which fell into several broad categories: these included oxygen and reactive oxygen therapy; energy and radiation-based therapies; nutritional therapy; chelation and heavy metal therapy; and biological and pharmacological therapies ranging from certain medications without recognized therapeutic effects on Borrelia burgdorgeri to stem cell transplantation. Review of the medical literature did not substantiate efficacy or, in most cases, any rationale for the advertised treatments.

Conclusions. Providers of alternative therapies commonly target patients who believe they have Lyme disease. The efficacy of these unconventional treatments for Lyme disease is not supported by scientific evidence, and in many cases they are potentially harmful.

Time and time again, we’ve seen it. When pseudoscientists and quacks can’t persuade the scientific and medical community of the validity of their claims, they go to the law to try to gain the legitimacy that their claims can’t garner through proving themselves by the scientific method. True, purveyors of pseudoscience and unscientifically-derived medical practices do crave the respectability of science. That’s why they try so hard to take on the trappings of science. The problem is that they just can’t do it right, try as they might, or when they do it right their methods are shown to be no more effective than a placebo, aside from the occasional seeming “positive” results that would be expected based on random chance alone. However, failing to achieve the respectability that the mantle of science provides, practitioners and advocates of pseudoscience frequently try to codify their woo into the law.

The reason that they would do this is not too hard to discern. Few legislators and politicians are scientists, and even fewer are scientifically inclined. Back when I still lived in New Jersey, I may have been lucky enough to have had a Congressional Representative who really was a rocket scientist (well, a physicist, actually), but now that I live in Michigan I’ve gone from having a scientifically inclined Congressional representative to having one of the dimmest bulbs in Congress representing me. What that means is that it’s far easier to persuade politicians that this woo or that woo deserves to be permitted or even licensed. That’s how we now have many states licensing acupuncturists, naturopaths, and even “homeopathic physicians,” as Arizona does. The pressure for this sort of acceptance of unscientific medical modalities is building, as well, as KimballAtwoodhasdocumented. Another example is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was passed in 1994 and in essence ties the FDA’s hands when it comes to regulating most supplements. Indeed, the very existence of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is a testament to the success of this approach, as a powerful Senator (Tom Harkin, D-IA) almost single-handedly foisted this scientific atrocity on the NIH against the desires of scientists. The results have included a $30 million scientific boondoggle of a trial to test chelation therapy and a profoundly unethical trial of Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez’s “protocol” for pancreatic cancer patients that a recent clinical trial has shown to be worse than useless. The most recent example of this trend is the way that CAM supporters have tried to hijack President Obama’s health insurance reform initiative to insert coverage for everything from any licensed “alternative medicine” practitioner to Christian Science prayer healing.

Recently, two new fronts have been opened up in this battle. One is disturbingly close to me, as it involves the Canadian province of Ontario whose north shore on the Detroit River is less than two and a half miles from my office, the other in Oregon, which, although it’s happening nearly 2,000 miles away from where I live and practice, could portend a new and disturbing tactic of the anti-vaccine movement to do what various other purveyors of pseudoscience have done before and try to win in state legislatures where they can’t win in science or the courts. Of course, in a democratic republic, it is the right of everyone, even supporters of quackery, to try to petition his or her legislators, but it is equally the responsibility of those of us supporting science-based medicine to try to educate legislators why allowing them to alter the law to protect their pseudoscience has the potential to result in great harm.(more…)